


the space between goodbyes

by robotsdontcry



Category: Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Grief/Mourning, Healing, M/M, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24633667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robotsdontcry/pseuds/robotsdontcry
Summary: Cloud sees Zack's ghost, and comes to a few realizations.
Relationships: Zack Fair/Cloud Strife
Comments: 8
Kudos: 122





	the space between goodbyes

**Author's Note:**

> loosely follows the timeline of the original game, but in an AU where cloud retains most of his memories when he wakes up post-nibelheim.

The first time it happens, Cloud thinks he must be dreaming.

“Yo.”

_“Zack?”_

He’d recognize that voice anywhere. Hearing it now roots him to the spot, all the blood in his veins turning to ice.

“That’s my name,” Zack says. He’s smiling, perched on top of a heap of rusted metal in the train graveyard and looking as real as Cloud’s ever seen him. 

Cloud watches in stunned silence as Zack heaves himself off his makeshift tower, landing easily on his feet as a trained soldier should be able to. He looks exactly as Cloud remembers: wide smile against tanned skin, vivid blue eyes that glow in the dingy shadows of the abandoned junkyard.

“You’re not real,” Cloud manages over the sudden lump in his throat, more to remind himself than anything else.

“I’m real,” Zack insists. “I promise.”

This can’t be happening. Either this is a dream, or he’s going insane. But Zack looks so real, so _alive_ , that despite every good reason not to, Cloud reaches out to touch him. His fingers close around the empty space where Zack’s wrist should be.

“You can’t touch me,” Zack says softly.

There’s no one else around, out here among the abandoned trains at midnight, no one to see him talking to a ghost. Cloud lets his hand linger in the air for a moment longer before withdrawing it. He hopes Zack doesn’t notice him tremble, a violent shiver that passes through his whole body.

Instead of saying what’s actually on his mind, Cloud says, “You’re not supposed to be here.”

“Too late.” Zack smiles. The sight of it makes Cloud ache with a sudden nostalgia, remembering all the words he’d never had the chance to say. “I’m here to stay.”

…

They’re in the Sector 7 slums, standing in the dark of Cloud’s apartment.

“I need somewhere to sleep, right?” Zack says, by way of explanation.

Cloud rubs at his tired eyes. The weight of Zack’s presence, the blue half-light filtering through the window, the sounds of Midgar traffic from somewhere far away: none of it is fully registering. He needs some sleep, and maybe in the morning, he’ll discover that none of this ever happened.

“Do ghosts even need sleep?”

“Uh, yeah.” Zack gives him a look that says, _duh,_ and Cloud would feel stupid and self-conscious if he wasn’t talking to a ghost.

“You can sleep on the floor then,” he mutters.

“Come on,” Zack pouts. “That’s no way to treat an old friend.”

He has that puppy-dog look on his face, the one Cloud remembers like it was yesterday. He looks from Zack, who’s taller and broader than him, to the bed, and begins to have some serious doubts. His face suddenly feels hot.

“Fine,” Cloud grits out.

It’s almost comical how fast Zack’s face lights up. Too predictable. “Great!”

“You, uh, probably don’t need to shower, right?” Cloud asks. He stumbles over the words, internally cursing at how ridiculous they sound, but Zack doesn’t seem to mind.

“Nah,” Zack replies cheerfully. “That’s one perk of being a ghost.”

He yawns and climbs onto the bed without hesitation, as though he belongs here, as though there’s nothing strange about sharing a bed with the ghost of your dead best friend. Cloud just stands there and watches, ready to sink into the ground from embarrassment. It’s nearly one in the morning, and this is too much for him to handle right now.

“I’m gonna—” he begins, then bolts for the bathroom.

Once in the shower, Cloud leaves the hot water running long after he’s finished washing himself. He closes his eyes and angles his face toward the steady spray of water, breathes in the steam. 

He must be sleep-deprived, or hallucinating, or something along those lines. This can’t be real; Zack’s been dead for months. Cloud watched him die with his own eyes, heard his dying words, felt the moment his breathing stopped. Maybe, he thinks bitterly, now is the time he finally loses it.

By the time he gets out of the shower, Zack’s already snoring. Cloud dries his hair with a towel and watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, and can’t help but feel something warm rise between his ribs at the sight. After a moment of hesitation, he gets into the bed beside Zack. Cloud feels the air stirring behind him as Zack breathes, soft and steady. 

It’s the best sleep he’s gotten in ages.

…

Cloud learns, when he wakes up the next morning and the one after that, that it wasn’t a dream after all.

It’s embarrassing, but it’s not like he’s going to tell anyone about it. Hopefully one day Zack will disappear, just as suddenly as he appeared to Cloud that night in the train graveyard, and Cloud can pretend none of this ever happened.

Besides, Zack usually doesn’t bother him during the day, when Cloud’s running around Midgar doing odd jobs and blowing up reactors. It’s only in the evening, when he returns to his apartment for the night, that Zack comes back into existence and Cloud remembers he’s been living with a ghost for the past few weeks.

When the group leaves Midgar behind, Zack comes along too, materializing inside rooms and behind trees in the villages they pass through. Nobody else seems to see him except Cloud, which he’s more than fine with, even if he does have to explain to the others why he’s been mumbling to himself a lot lately.

Zack loved boats. Cloud remembers this when they stow away on the cargo ship from Junon and he finds Zack leaning over the edge, gazing at the waves. It’s not often he appears in broad daylight, so the sight of him takes Cloud by surprise.

“Aerith always loved the ocean,” Zack says.

“Yeah.”

For a moment Cloud feels bad that Aerith won’t be able to see the water until they dock in Costa del Sol. She’s hiding out below deck, disguised as a crew member, lifting boxes and actually trying to be helpful.

Zack stays quiet for a while. Cloud feels his stomach lurch as the ship rocks back and forth, and grabs at the handrail to keep his balance. He’s never liked moving vehicles.

“She hates me, doesn’t she?” Zack asks, after a long silence.

“She doesn’t hate you,” Cloud says. 

It’s true. There’s anger and hurt and sorrow, maybe, but not hatred. Aerith could never hate anyone, least of all Zack. She told Cloud once, leaning against his shoulder as he walked her back to her room after a drunken night at the bar, that she’d loved Zack more than she even knew was possible. Cloud recalls this conversation with an odd twinge in his chest.

“Tell her,” Zack begins, and pauses. Cloud’s never seen him hesitate before, not for anything. “Tell her I’m sorry.”

“I think she’d want to hear it from you,” Cloud says.

“She can’t see me. You’re the only one who can.”

Not for the first time, Cloud wonders why Zack chose to appear to him. He knows for a fact that there were dozens of people in Zack’s life who loved him dearly, simply because he was Zack and everyone loved him. He had a certain gravity that drew people to him like planets circling a star. Cloud was not immune.

His voice betrays the rest of his body when he asks, quietly, “Did you love her?”

Zack’s gaze is fixed on something far in the distance. Cloud looks toward the horizon but all he sees is the hypnotizing blue of the ocean stretching endlessly in all directions, the line where sea meets sky. Even before Zack says it, Cloud knows.

“Yeah,” Zack admits. He sucks in a shaky breath. “I did.”

“I’ll tell her, then.”

Zack turns to him, eyes wide and hopeful. This is for Aerith, Cloud has to remind himself, even as his heart rate kicks up a notch under the force of Zack’s full, undivided attention. 

“You’re okay with that?”

“Yeah,” Cloud says firmly. “She deserves to know.”

Silence settles over them. Cloud closes his eyes, feeling the cold spray from the crashing waves on his face, the wind in his hair. He concentrates on breathing. His head, which had been throbbing just ten minutes ago, feels a little bit better out here, under the open sky. 

He opens his eyes to find Zack watching him intently.

“Your eyes are the same color as the ocean,” Zack observes, as though he’s only now realizing it. Cloud huffs in response, because who says stuff like that. 

“So are yours. Did you forget?”

He watches, paralyzed, as Zack steps forward and reaches out to brush a thumb against Cloud’s cheek, though Cloud feels nothing except for the wind rushing past. Zack goes through the motion slowly, as if fascinated. 

“Beautiful,” he murmurs.

Zack is close. Too close. Cloud’s suddenly hyper-aware of how Zack is a few inches taller than him, and despite his best efforts his whole body shudders with barely-suppressed desire. This close, he feels like he’s about to fall apart at the seams.

He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t thought about this. In his dreams, Zack is pressing him up against the wall, his body hot and solid against Cloud’s; or Cloud is lying on his back as Zack hovers above, mouth a few tantalizing inches from his own. It’s wrong, he knows, and he feels ashamed and horrible just for imagining it.

It’s not surprising that even now, after all this time, Zack still makes him fall apart in the worst and best of ways.

Cloud steps away quickly. His face is on fire.

“We’re getting off soon,” he says, forcing his voice to remain steady. “I’ll gather everyone.”

Zack nods, but Cloud feels his gaze burning into him even as he turns to go.

…

Summer in Gongaga is hot and humid. During their stay, they remain indoors as much as possible, purchasing paper fans and ice-cold drinks from the general store next door to the inn. At night cricketsong floats up from the fields surrounding the village, haunting and melancholic.

Cloud finds Zack sitting on a bench outside his house as he shuts the door behind him. Zack looks at him, expectant.

“How were they?”

“They seemed fine, I guess.”

The midday sun is sweltering, the heavy silence punctuated only by the harsh buzzing of insects. Zack keeps staring and waiting, a hundred times more patient than he’d been while he was alive, but Cloud studiously avoids his gaze. His face burns with guilt.

“Well?”

“I’m sorry,” he says finally. “I couldn’t do it.”

When he admitted to Zack’s parents that he knew their son, their faces changed, brightening as if they hadn’t seen the sun in a long time. Cloud couldn’t bring himself to tell them that their son is dead, has been for half a year, when there was so much hope still alive in their eyes. 

Maybe there’s a part of him that refuses to believe it, too.

“Is it better to stake your whole life on a lie,” Zack says, quiet, “or to have everything fall apart in the face of the truth?”

Cloud doesn’t answer. He can’t, not when there’s a lump in his throat and his chest feels like it’s being weighed down by a hundred worlds. He remembers the helpless feeling he’d gotten in that small, dark space, like a caged animal, as they stared at him, waiting for something he couldn’t possibly give.

“Well,” Zack says, and stretches out languidly under the sun. “I guess that’s that, then. They’ll find out sooner or later.”

He stands up as if to walk away, and Cloud’s stomach sinks. He swallows slowly.

“Wait,” he finds himself saying. “I’ll do it.”

“Huh?” Zack pauses.

“I’ll tell them. Just—give me some time, okay?”

Zack studies him for a moment longer, his expression unreadable, then nods.

In the end Cloud stays up all night, writing and rewriting, scratching out pages and pages of words. Words aren’t enough, he knows this, but he wrestles with them as best he can, tries to assemble them in a way that conveys everything he’s feeling in the moment. Who Zack had been, and what he’d meant to Cloud. 

In the morning he places the letter in Zack’s parents’ mailbox. The pain and the grief along with the quiet empathy, come to life on eight pieces of paper for them to relive.

…

Zack watches him train in the early hours of the morning, when everyone else is still asleep and it’s just Cloud, the looming mountain, and the crisp clean air. He perches on a nearby rock and calls out pointers, coaching him on his form, until Cloud’s doubled over and heaving. He never remembers infantry training being this exhausting.

Finally, Zack gives him a water break.

“Looking good,” he says with a whistle, as Cloud goes through his third water bottle of the workout. The way Zack drags his gaze over Cloud’s muscles, turned slick with sweat, makes something dark and hungry curl in the pit of his stomach.

“Shut up,” he mutters, his face hot.

Zack jumps to his feet and starts pacing around the perimeter of the clearing. Apparently ghosts get restless too; or more likely, Zack can never sit still even in the afterlife. He stretches his arms above his head, his muscles flexing. Now it’s Cloud’s turn to stare.

“Like what you see?”

Scowling, Cloud throws his empty water bottle at him. He ducks just in time.

“I can’t believe the first time we met, you were just some scrawny kid,” Zack says with a wolfish grin.

“And you were some First Class idiot,” Cloud retorts.

“Hey, watch it! Where would you be without me, I wonder?”

He’s joking. Cloud knows this but goes quiet anyway. A knot makes itself known in his chest, so tightly wound that it’s hard to speak or even to breathe.

“Uh, Cloud? You okay?”

“If it wasn’t for you,” Cloud says quietly, “I’d probably still be a foot soldier dreaming of making First Class.”

He’s not sure what his face looks like right now, but Zack must see something there because his expression changes, too. There’s a cool breeze coming down from the mountain, and it sweeps gently over them both.

“Don’t look so sad,” he says. “You would’ve made it sooner or later.”

“That’s not it.” Cloud shakes his head, wrestles for the right words. 

How do you thank someone who grabbed your hand and kept pulling you upward, even when you felt yourself sinking? Who took you in and believed in you when you were nobody, who always stood by your side, who dragged your comatose body over an entire continent and across an ocean? _Why me?_ Cloud wants to shout. _Why did you choose me?_

At last he says, “You gave me a chance. When nobody else would.”

Zack watches him for a moment, quiet.

“I just did what anyone would’ve done, if they had looked carefully enough.”

His words carry the weight of a thousand unspoken implications. Cloud tries to swallow over the lump in his throat.

Then, Zack smiles. “Come on, lazy bones,” he says. “What happened to training? Look at you right now! There’s no way you’d stand a chance against me in my prime.”

“I’ll take you on right here,” Cloud retorts, but there’s no real bite to it.

“Fighting words, huh? I like it.”

He trains until the sun peeks over the edge of the mountain and the village is stirring. His muscles ache but for once his head feels clear, the knot in his chest a little looser.

…

Cloud finds Zack in his room back at the inn, sitting on his bed.

He’d left the campfire early, muttering something about a headache. If Tifa and the others have caught Cloud talking to himself more than usual, spending a suspicious amount of time on his own, they haven’t said anything to his face. But considering Aerith’s uncanny powers of perception, he has a feeling she knows.

“You’re back early,” Zack observes.

“Yeah,” Cloud says, taking a seat on the bed. 

He feels exhausted for some reason he can’t name, yet something like anxiety trembles in every muscle in his body. He rests his face in his hands, his heart pounding as if he’d sprinted back to the room, and breathes. Zack watches him carefully for a moment.

“You okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” Cloud says.

“You’re not gonna tell them about me, are you?”

“Why would I?”

 _You’re my secret,_ Cloud wants to add, but doesn’t. Zack grins anyway, clearly knowing what he was going to say.

“It’s sweet of you,” he teases. 

Cloud turns away, feeling his cheeks heat up. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Zack lean in, closing the distance between them. His lips brush Cloud’s cheek before he pulls away, but Cloud feels nothing except for the tiniest movement of air. Unconsciously, he raises a hand to the side of his face. His throat is dry all of a sudden.

“Don’t—do that,” he manages.

“Why not?”

It’s too much, is what he wants to say. Zack’s expression is so tender, so sincere, that Cloud feels his heart breaking a little. He closes his eyes, reminds himself that it’s a ghost he’s talking to, that these emotions are fake. But how can he believe that, when Zack seems so real, looks so alive?

“It’s confusing,” Cloud mumbles. “I can’t tell if you’re real, or just in my head.”

Zack looks hurt. “I told you, remember? I’m real.”

_But are you?_

“Just trust me on this,” he says, quiet.

And as always, against his better judgement, Cloud does. Zack’s gravity will always pull him in, no matter how hard he tries to fight it. Either way, Cloud figures, he has nothing to lose anymore, and the thought itself releases a certain weight off his chest.

“Can I—” It’s almost pathetic how Cloud’s voice cracks. “Can I kiss you?”

Silence. For a rare, rare moment, Zack is speechless. 

Then he smiles, soft and sad. “You can’t touch me, remember?”

Cloud shakes his head. “I’m going to try anyway.”

Moving as if in a trance, he shifts closer so that they’re side by side on the bed. He reaches out tentatively, placing a hand on Zack’s arm.

His fingers close around solid flesh, though it’s as cold as stone. Zack looks up and meets Cloud’s gaze, both of them stunned. 

“I—I thought you were a ghost,” Cloud says numbly.

“I am.” Zack rubs at the back of his neck, sheepish. He admits, “Maybe I just really, really want this. I guess the universe is being nice to me today?”

Neither of them questions it further. Cloud can’t deny the effect Zack’s words have on his body, sending an electric pulse through his veins. He grips Zack’s arms and feels the firm muscle there, fascinated with the solidness of his body. How long has he wanted this? He can’t remember, not when his heart’s pounding this fast. 

Zack’s eyelashes are long. His eyes are the same shade of blue as the ocean, deep and infinite. Cloud bites his lip, willing himself not to get distracted, and leans in. 

It shouldn’t feel this good, kissing a ghost.

Zack laughs into the kiss. His hands find their way to either side of Cloud’s face, tilting his face up. He kisses like he’s done this before, moving his mouth against Cloud’s so expertly it leaves him breathless, and Cloud thinks he could drown in the heat of his touch. Then Zack’s tongue swipes at his lips and Cloud is gasping and making all sorts of embarrassing noises into Zack’s open mouth. 

Zack is strong and steady and self-assured. His body is solid and feels achingly real against Cloud’s. For a moment, Cloud is sixteen and in love and not afraid of anything.

…

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

They’re sitting on the roof of Cloud’s old house in Nibelheim, Zack swinging his legs back and forth over the ledge. Like a kid, Cloud thinks. The stars are bright tonight, a glittering map in the darkness.

“Back then,” Cloud begins. “Outside of Midgar, when we got caught.”

Zack waits, quiet. He’s half-translucent against the midnight sky, the outline of his body shimmering faintly. Moonlight reflects in his eyes, bathing his face and hands in pale silver. If Zack catches him staring he doesn’t say anything, his mouth curving upward ever so slightly. For the first time, Cloud lets his gaze linger. He doesn’t look away.

“Why did you do it?” he asks, breathless. “Why’d you give your life up for mine?”

Zack smiles, as if it’s obvious.

“I loved you,” he says, easy and sure. “I still do.” And the world falls out from underneath Cloud’s feet.

Zack was strong and brave and kind-hearted. He was someone Cloud could bring home, who would compliment his mother’s cooking and wash the dishes after dinner and look after Cloud the way his mother had wanted. He taught Cloud about love and loss, what it feels like to ache after someone with every breath you draw, to have your heart ripped from your body.

“I don’t get it,” Cloud says hoarsely.

“What?”

“Why you’re dead, and I’m alive. You should’ve been the one who lived, back then.”

Zack’s face turns serious, but he listens silently as Cloud continues, his voice shaking with anger and guilt.

“I didn’t do a single damn thing to deserve this life,” he says.

“Don’t say things like that,” Zack says, voice low and harsh. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“But—”

“Listen to me!”

Cloud falls silent. Zack looks angrier than he’s ever seen him.

Zack breathes, his shoulders trembling ever so slightly. “There’s a reason you’re alive, Cloud. Even if you don’t know it yet.”

Starlight flickers across his face. As Zack speaks, Cloud tries to commit every inch of him to memory, all the sharp angles and gentle curves. He traces Zack’s hairline down to his strong jaw, his kind eyes and firm mouth. His chest fills with something lighter than air when he realizes that Zack is his, to cherish and to mourn for as long as he lives. 

“Don’t let it all be for nothing, alright?” Zack says.

Cloud exhales shakily.

“Okay,” he says.

…

Finally, when it’s all over:

Cloud travels to the place in the cliffs, just outside Midgar, where Zack’s life ended and his began. His mind transports him to a time two years ago, to a boy with raven-black hair and a scar on his jaw and eyes so blue they made his heart ache. A boy he’d loved with every fiber of his being. A boy who will always remain an inseparable part of him, the other half of his soul.

He puts his sword in the ground.

Zack stands a few yards away, watching quietly. His body is practically transparent, fading away with each passing second. Cloud knows that if he touches him now, his hand would pass directly through empty space. But it’s okay. He’s made his peace, said the goodbye he never had the chance to say two years ago.

“You good?” Zack asks him.

Cloud nods.

“Yeah,” he manages. “I’m good.”

**Author's Note:**

> i stayed up until 5am writing then went outside and ran 6 feverish, sleep-deprived miles. this game + quarantine is doing things to me and i don’t like it.
> 
> thank you for reading!


End file.
